Download First world war

 The First World War began when Britain and Germany
went to war in August 1914, and Prime Minister
Andrew Fisher's government pledged full support for
Britain. The outbreak of war was greeted in Australia,
as in many other places, with great enthusiasm.
 Australian
troops in the
Turkish Lone
Pine trenches.
 Australia's early involvement in the Great War
included the Australian Naval and Military
Expeditionary Force landing at Rabaul on 11 September
1914 and taking possession of German New Guinea at
Toma on 17 September 1914 and the neighbouring
islands of the Bismarck Archipelago in October 1914.
 On 14 November 1914 the Royal Australian Navy made
a significant contribution when HMAS Sydney
destroyed the German raider SMS Emden.
 On 25 April 1915 members of the Australian Imperial
Force (AIF) landed at Gallipoli together with troops from
New Zealand, Britain, and France.
 This began a campaign that ended with the evacuation of
troops on 19 and 20 December 1915.
 Following Gallipoli, Australian forces fought campaigns
on the Western Front and in the Middle East.
 Throughout 1916 and 1917 losses on the Western Front
were heavy and gains were small.
 In 1918 the Australians reached the peak of their
fighting performance in the battle of Hamel on 4 July.

 From 8 August they then took part in a series of
decisive advances until Germany surrendered on 11
November.
 The Middle East campaign began in 1916 with
Australian troops participating in the defence of the
Suez Canal and the allied reconquest of the Sinai
peninsula.
 In the following year Australian and other allied
troops advanced into Palestine and captured Gaza and
Jerusalem;
 by 1918 they had occupied Lebanon and Syria. On 30
October 1918 Turkey sued for peace.
 For Australia, as for many nations, the First World War
remains the most costly conflict in terms of deaths and
casualties.
 From a population of fewer than five million, 416,809
men enlisted, of which over 60,000 were killed and
156,000 wounded, gassed, or taken prisoner.
 The outbreak of war was greeted in Australia, as in
many other places, with great public enthusiasm.
 In response to the overwhelming number of
volunteers, the authorities set exacting physical
standards for recruits.
 Yet, most of the men accepted into the army in August
1914 were sent first to Egypt, not Europe, to meet the
threat which a new belligerent, the Ottoman Empire
(Turkey), posed to British interests in the Middle East
and the Suez Canal.
 An Australian
digger uses a
periscope in a
trench captured
during the
attack on Lone
Pine, Gallipoli,
8 August 1915.
 After four and a half months of training near Cairo,
the Australians departed by ship for the Gallipoli
peninsula, with troops from New Zealand, Britain,
and France.
 The Australians landed at what became known as
ANZAC Cove on 25 April 1915 and established a
tenuous foothold on the steep slopes above the
beach.
 During the early days of the campaign, the allies tried
to break through Turkish lines, while the Turks tried to
drive the allied troops off the peninsula.
 Attempts on both sides ended in failure and the
ensuing stalemate continued for the remainder of 1915.
 The most successful operation of the campaign was
the evacuation of troops on 19 and 20 December,
under cover of a comprehensive deception operation.
 As a result, the Turks were unable to inflict more than
a very few casualties on the retreating forces.
 After Gallipoli the AIF was reorganised and expanded
from two to five infantry divisions, all of which were
progressively transferred to France, beginning in
March 1916.
 The AIF mounted division that had served as
additional infantry during the campaign remained in
the Middle East.
 When the other AIF divisions arrived in France, the
war on the Western Front had long been settled in a
stalemate, with the opposing armies facing each other
from trench systems that extended across Belgium and
north-east France, from the English Channel to the
Swiss border.
 The development of machine-guns and artillery
favoured defence over attack and compounded the
impasse, which lasted until the final months of the
war.
 Troops of 53rd
Battalion wait to don
equipment for the
attack at Fromelles,
19 July 1916. Only
three of these men
survived.
 While the overall hostile stasis continued throughout
1916 and 1917, the Australians and other allied armies
repeatedly attacked, preceded by massive artillery
bombardments intended to cut barbed wire and
destroy enemy defences.
 After these bombardments, waves of attacking infantry
emerged from the trenches into no man's land and
advanced towards enemy positions.
 The surviving Germans, protected by deep and heavily
reinforced bunkers, were usually able to repel the
attackers with machine-gun fire and artillery support
from the rear.
 These attacks often resulted in limited territorial gains
followed, in turn, by German counter-attacks.
Although this style of warfare favoured the defence,
both sides sustained heavy losses.
 In July 1916 Australian infantry were introduced to this
type of combat at Fromelles, where they suffered 5,533
casualties in 24 hours.
 By the end of the year about 40,000 Australians had
been killed or wounded on the Western Front. In 1917 a
further 76,836 Australians became casualties in
battles, such Bullecourt, Messines, and the fourmonth campaign around Ypres, known as the battle of
Passchendaele.
 Australian
wounded
infantrymen at
the first battle
of
Passchendaele,
near Zonnebele
railway station.
 In March 1918 the German army launched its final
offensive of the war, hoping for a decisive victory
before the military and industrial strength of the
United States could be fully mobilised in support of
the allies.
 The Germans initially met with great success,
advancing 64 kilometres past the region of the 1916
Somme battles, before the offensive lost momentum.
 Between April and November the stalemate of the
preceding years began to give way, as the allies
combined infantry, artillery, tanks, and aircraft more
effectively, demonstrated in the Australian capture of
Hamel spur on 4 July 1918.
 The allied offensive, beginning on 8 August at
Amiens, also contributed to Australian successes at
Mont St Quentin and Péronne and to the capture of
the Hindenburg Line.
 In early October the Australian divisions withdrew
from the front for rest and refitting; they were
preparing to return when Germany surrendered on 11
November.
 3rd Australian Light
Horse Regiment
machine-gunners in
action at KhurbethaIbn-Harith, near
Palestine, 31 December
1917.
 Unlike their counterparts in France and Belgium, the
Australians in the Middle East fought a mobile war
against the Ottoman Empire in conditions completely
different from the mud and stagnation of the Western
Front.
 he light horsemen and their mounts had to survive
extreme heat, harsh terrain, and water shortages.
Nevertheless, casualties were comparatively light, with
1,394 Australians killed or wounded in three years of
war.
 This campaign began in 1916 with Australian troops
participating in the defence of the Suez Canal and the
allied reconquest of the Sinai peninsula.
 In the following year Australian and other allied
troops advanced into Palestine and captured Gaza and
Jerusalem;
 by 1918 they had occupied Lebanon and Syria. On 30
October 1918 Turkey sued for peace.
 Australians also served at sea and in the newly formed
flying corps.
 The Royal Australian Navy (RAN), under the
command of the Royal Navy, made a significant
contribution early in the war, when HMAS Sydney
destroyed the German raider Emden near the Cocos
Islands in November 1914.
 The Great War was the first armed conflict in which
aircraft were used; about 3,000 Australian airmen
served in the Middle East and France with the
Australian Flying Corps, mainly in observation
capacities or providing infantry support.
 HMAS Sydney at
full speed, ten
minutes after
the ceasefire
was ordered in
her battle with
the German
cruiser Emden.
 9th Australian Light
Horse bring in
Turkish prisoners in
the Sinai, 13 April
1916.
 Australian women volunteered for service in auxiliary
roles, as cooks, nurses, drivers, interpreters, munitions
workers, and skilled farm workers.
 While the government welcomed the service of nurses,
it generally rejected offers from women in other
professions to serve overseas.
 Australian nurses served in Egypt, France, Greece,
and India, often in trying conditions or close to the
front, where they were exposed to shelling and aerial
bombardment.
 The effect of the war was also felt at home. Families
and communities grieved following the loss of so many
men, and women increasingly assumed the physical
and financial burden of caring for families.
 Anti-German feeling emerged with the outbreak of
the war, and many Germans living in Australia were
sent to internment camps.
 Censorship and surveillance, regarded by many as an
excuse to silence political views that had no effect on
the outcome of war, increased as the conflict
continued.
 Social division also grew, reaching a climax in the
bitterly contested (and unsuccessful) conscription
referendums held in 1916 and 1917.
 When the war ended, thousands of ex-servicemen,
many disabled with physical or emotional wounds,
had to be re-integrated into a society keen to consign
the war to the past and resume normal life.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophia: The June 28,
1914, assassination of Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro -Hungarian
Empire, by Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip set off a chain of
events that ended in the outbreak of World War I.
 General Douglas Haig: Haig commanded British forces at the
Battle of the Somme, losing 60,000 men on the first day. By the end
of the campaign, the Allies had lost more than 600,000 men--and
advanced fewer than eight miles. Haig rebounded with success in
1918, but remains one of the most controversial generals of the war.
 Kaiser Wilhelm II: A fierce militarist, Wilhelm II
encouraged aggressive Austro-Hungarian diplomatic
policies following the assasination of Franz Ferdinand. The
Kaiser was nominally in charge of the German army, but the
real power lay with his generals. As World War I drew to a
close, he was forced to abdicate in 1918 .
 General John J. Pershing: A graduate of West Point and a
veteran of the Battle of San Juan Hill, "Black Jack" Pershing
was named commander of the American Expeditionary
Force when the United States entered World War I in April
1917.
 General Pershing and Staff: General Pershing initially resisted
efforts to combine American troops with British and French
forces, but after the Meuse-Argonne offensive failed to break the
stalemate on the Western Front, a joint Allied command was
launched. In November 1918, an armistice finally put an end to the
fighting.
 Vladmir Lenin: After the Bolsheviks seized power during the
Russian Revolution of 1917, Lenin negotiated the Treaty of BrestLitovsk. The treaty ended Russia's involvement in World War I,
but on humiliating terms: Russia lost territory and nearly onequarter of its population to the Central Powers.
 Tsar Nicholas II: When Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia,
Russia's alliance with its Balkan neighbor forced it to enter the war
against the Central Powers. The tsar assumed control of the
Russian army, with disastrous results. In 1917, he was forced to
abdicate, and he and his family were executed in 1918.
 Georges Clemenceau : As prime minister of France from 1917
to 1920, Clemenceau worked to restore French morale and
concentrate Allied military forces under Ferdinand Foch. He
led the French delegation to the peace talks ending World War
I, during which he insisted on harsh reparation payments and
German disarmament.
 Ferdinand Foch: Foch led French forces at the First Battle of the
Marne, but was removed from command after the Battle of the
Somme in 1916. In 1918, he was named Allied Supreme
Commander, coordinating the war's final offensives. Foch was
present at the armistice ending the war in November, 1918.
 Marshall Philippe Pétain: Pétain became a national hero
in France after his success at the Battle of Verdun during
World War I. However, during World War II, Pétain headed
the Vichy regime, a pro-German puppet government, and as
a result has a mixed and deeply controversial legacy.
 Winston Churchill, 1918: In 1911, Churchill became First Lord
of the Admiralty. In this position, he worked to strengthen the
British navy. He was pushed out of office after the disastrous
1915 Gallipoli campaign, in modern-day Turkey, which resulted
in more than 250,000 Allied casualties.
Prepared By:
Lavanya Thammaiah.T. ,
Smart Class co-ordinator,
General Thimayya Public
School,
 Madikeri.
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